Negative of a Group Photograph

£12

Shortlisted for the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation 2019

Negative of a Group Photograph brings together three decades of poems by the leading Iranian poet Azita Ghahreman. Born in Mashhad in 1962 and based in Sweden since 2006, Ghahreman is the author of five highly acclaimed collections. Her poems are lyrical and intimate, addressing themes of loss, exile and female desire, as well as the changing face of her country.

Negative of a Group Photograph runs the gamut of Ghahreman’s experience: from her childhood in the Khorasan region of south-eastern Iran to her exile to Sweden, from Iran’s book-burning years and the war in Iraq to her unexpected encounters with love.

The poems in this illuminating collection are brought to life in English by translator Elhum Shakerifar, working in collaboration with poet Maura Dooley.

“Azita is a poet who pays respect to the past, but doesn’t live in it. Her poems are sometimes darkened with loss, but just as often lightened with humour, lyricism, a celebration of the human spirit.”
– Imtiaz Dharker, Radio 4, Mother Tongue

ISBN: 9781780374369
Format: Paperback
Size: 216 x 138mm, 129 pages
Languages: Farsi, English
Co-publisher: Bloodaxe Books